6 June - D-Day never forget, Hill Aerospace Museum, Packing it Up

6 June
I never forget my sister's birthday as it falls on the anniversary of D-Day - June 6th.  So happy birthday Karen!

It is hard to imagine what must have been going through those brave warrior's minds as they hit the beach in Normandy.  Our thoughts are with the families of the 425,000 Allied and German troops who perished there.

Today will more or less be our last day as tourists here in the Salt Lake City area.  Tomorrow morning we have to have our RV in to the trailer repair shop at 0800 hrs to fix and reinforce the bent spring shackle mount, and replace the bronze bushings and wet bolts.  We have to totally pack up to move the RV so when they are done, assuming it is at a descent hour, we will head on south and west to our next destination one day earlier than planned.  While we are waiting for the RV to be repaired, I made an appointment to have the oil changed on the pickup.  It is a bit early in the oil life, but the engine is working extra hard in the mountains so better early that later in my book.

This morning I replaced the 12-24VDC converter module that died in our network setup last week. We got the new one last night that we had shipped to Doreen's cousin's house.  The replacement took about 10 minutes and it is working great.  It gives us WiFi in our RV both while we camp and going down the road off our AT&T network box, so it saves us from having to up our Verizon data plan.  Translation:  Saves Me $$!!  A bit later we headed down to the Hill Aerospace Museum.  It is located just outside the gate at Hill Air Force base so the general public can get to it without a military ID card.  We have seen the extensive outside display of aircraft from the interstate several times, but had no idea there were so many inside displays.

We started out inside watching a movie and touring the Utah Aviation Hall of Fame.  We then entered one of two inside display hangars.  The Hadley gallery contained aircraft starting with a Burgess-Wright Flyer and many older "heavy's and fighters".  Here are a few photos of the unique displays in this hangar:

The Burgess-Wright Flyer

An old air traffic control tower

An old Dodge ambulance

A turret gun

A replica of the Trinity Nuclear Bomb 

German V-1 Buzz Bomb

 The next hangar we visited was the Lindquist Stewart gallery.  It contained more recent aircraft, primarily fighters, but also some helicopters and an SR-71 Blackbird.  Many of the fighters displayed Air national Guard markings:

An F-102 with Oregon ANG tail flash

An F-101 with Texas ANG tail flash

Sikorski MH-53M Pave Low IV "Super Jolly" rescue helicopter.  Notice the penetrator lowered to rescue downed aircrew

F-104 Starfighter

F-16 Fighting Falcon.  This one was built in 1979

A-10 Thunderbolt II

The business end of the A-10 - It's GAU-8.A 30mm cannon.  You do not want to be on the receiving end of this baby.  

Nice seating all set up for a presentation!!

An F-105G Thunderchief (Wild Weasel) configured for radar elimination

Nose view of the SR-71 Blackbird

In addition to aircraft displays they had an informative section on Vietnam and POW's.

We then moved outside to the massive displays there.

A panoramic of part of the outside display area

This is a YA-7F Corsair II, "The Plane That Almost Was".  We flew A-7's in Des Moines but this one was a prototype upgrade, one of two made with a longer fuselage, more powerful engine and stronger wings.  The Air Force decided to go with the F-16 rather than the upgraded A-7 and no more were ever built.

A different view of the YA-7F

That's it for the Hill Aerospace Museum.  I took many other pictures but did not want to drown you here with them.  If you are ever in this area and are interested at all in military aviation, you need to divert a short distance off I-15 to this great FREE museum.  After the museum we diverted into Hill AFB and hit the commissary to restock the pantry before we move on tomorrow.

Again, tomorrow at 0700 hrs we will depart the campground and head to the trailer repair shop.  We hope to be on the road with a repaired RV and a pickup with a fresh oil change early afternoon headed west to our next stop, Elko NV - just a two-nighter as we head for Fallon Naval Air Station SE of Reno.  The Ogden UT area has been great.  We have really enjoyed it.  Tomorrow while we travel and as we hit the UT-NV state lines, we plan to stop and see the Bonneville Salt Flats.  As a long time automobile enthusiast, I appreciate this place with all the land speed records that have been set here.